Warlock
:For related articles, see Category:Warlocks. Warlocks were once mages, or in case of the Orcs, Shaman, who, in pursuit of ever-greater sources of power, abandoned their studies of the Arcane or Nature and delved into darker Shadow-based magic. Warlocks still retain their skills in the manipulation of the Fire element, although their focus is on delivering excruciating pain, drawing out the suffering of their victims instead of the effective application of Arcane energies to efficiently dispose of their targets from a safe distance. Warlocks are unique among the DPS caster classes because of their ability to convert health into mana. Warlocks have the most powerful assortment of Damage over Time spells when used in conjunction, the most variety in debuffs and summonable minions. Just like a Mage, a Warlock’s Crowd control abilities appropriately used can stave off certain doom for the Warlock and their allies, and Warlock’s sustained Burst damage when suitably specced and geared can rival those of a Mage. However, the Warlock’s Area of Effect spells are not as varied as those of their Mage brethren, although when used appropriately they have powerful applications in group play. Warlocks are well versed in the "shock and horror" tactics of warfare, and their manipulation of Shadow energies can send their opponents reeling in Fear. At low levels, Warlocks rely primarily on minions and Damage over Time (DoT) spells to deal out damage to their enemies while fearing their enemies to prevent retribution. Endgame warlocks either choose to maximize the effects of their DoTs and Curses through the Affliction tree, increase the utility of their summoned minions and stones through the Demonology tree, or lay waste the opposition with Burst damage and Direct damage spells in the Destruction tree. In previous versions of WoW, the 8-debuff and 16-debuff limits prevented Warlocks from maximizing their damage output through Affliction spells, and Warlocks were relegated to chain-casting their Direct damage spells to maintain DPS in PvE raids. This has changed with the new 40-debuff limit, and Affliction DPS is now competitive in a raid environment. The Warlock can learn to summon magical mounts. All other classes, except Paladins, must purchase their own mounts with gold or via PvP. Being a Warlock demands certain things: being able to engage multiple targets simultaneously while keeping tabs on your minion, to make split-second strategic decisions on cast rotations depending on the situation, careful shard management and even more careful aggro management. Being a Warlock also rewards many things: they are PvP powerhouse due to naturally high stamina values, they have the ability to apply debilitating, even humiliating Crowd control abilities and in PvE their damage output in multiple target situations can rival those of other DPS classes who focus fire on a single target. Background Warlocks are arcane spellcasters devoted to trafficking with demons and other dark or vile beings. They are seeking the roots of demonic power and other dark knowledge. They initially appeared on Azeroth during the First War, when Gul'dan, the first of their kind, led the Horde across the dimensional gulf through the Dark Portal from the world of Draenor while in servitude to the Burning Legion. Night elves shun this class, given its roots in the arcane. Any who might take on the mantle of warlock would be forever sundered from their night elf heritage - socially, physically, and spiritually. Warlocks manipulate and summon demons and have profound control over shadow and fire magic. Although traditionally considered evil, Horde and Alliance leaders have tentatively accepted them to bolster troops. Some warlocks are known as hidden warlocks and some are uncorrupted warlocks. History : Warlock - From the Old English wærloga; "oath-breaker" or "deceiver". The eredar of the Burning Legion are credited as the original warlocks and wielders of dark magics, corrupted from the powerful and magically attuned eredar of Argus. In most societies, the warlocks now live on the fringe of civilization, tolerated but not trusted. Human warlocks meet in secret in the basement of a bar in Stormwind. Thrall has expressed discomfort with the warlocks but understands the necessities in using them. Conventional spellcasters often see warlock magic as a vain attempt at gaining power. Although many that consort with demons fall to darkness, the warlocks of the Horde and the Alliance advocate bending demonic forces to ones will without succumbing to complete corruption. These spellcasters can summon demons to serve them, and they also cast many painful spells that slowly eat at the life of their enemies. Warlocks are usually physically weak compared to other classes, but they compensate for this deficiency with their potent array of spells and their demonic minions. Compared to other spellcasters, warlocks are among the strongest and often depend on the sacrifice of their own blood to fuel their magical powers. In the world of Azeroth, there are many races who presently wield the dark power of the Nether. Playable ones including humans, gnomes, orcs, forsaken and blood elves. Each has its own history in the dark arts. Races The Warlock class can be played by the following races: Alliance * Gnomes * Humans Horde * Orcs * Undead * Blood Elves Weapons & Armor Warlocks can wear Cloth armor only, and can initially use Daggers and Unarmed combat in battle. They can also use Wands for ranged combat, and equip off-hands to enhance various skills. They can train at a weapon master for to gain the ability to use One-Handed Swords (Undercity, Silvermoon, Stormwind) and Staves (Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Stormwind). More information regarding Warlock-specific armor can be found at Warlock Sets. Attributes Stamina is one of the key Warlock attributes, especially for Demonology Warlocks. The main reason for this is that a Warlock can convert his health to mana through the spell Life Tap, thus allowing Stamina to partially fill the role for Intellect as well. Many Warlocks also depend on large health pools as their main source of defense. As a primary spellcaster, the Warlock also has great use for all the standard caster attributes, such as Intellect and Spell damage. The value of Spell crit depends on the talent build. With Ruin and the use of direct damage spells, it is very good. But for an Affliction Warlock that mostly uses DoTs, it is worth very little. In a raid scenario, Spell hit rating becomes significantly more valuable, taking precedence over stamina, crit, and even spell damage, to a certain extent. It is advisable that you cap spell your spell hit rating (16%; roughly 200 hit rating). After this point, however, spell hit rating is useless. The Warlock has no use for Strength and also little use for Agility. Spirit regenerates health and mana for Warlocks, but very slowly. Thus the most valuable stats are, in descending order: # +Spell Damage (especially valuable as it now boosts both DoTs and nukes as well as Life Tap and Dark Pact) # Spell hit # Stamina # Spell crit # Intellect # Health regeneration (+X Health per Y seconds) # Mana regeneration (+X Mana per Y seconds) # Spirit / Agility See also attributes, Formulas:Health Regen and Formulas:Mana Regen for more information. Soul Shards A large number of the Warlock's skills and spells rely on the reagent known as Soul Shards. Soul Shards are obtained by using the Drain Soul spell. To create a soul shard, the warlock must be channeling this spell as the target dies. Only targets that would give experience (or honor in the case of a PvP target) to the warlock will yield a Soul Shard. Shadowburn (talent) also creates a soul shard if the enemy dies within five seconds of casting it, but since it also costs a shard to cast, the net effect is zero shards (or less if the cast is mistimed or spell is resisted). Soul Shards are used to: summon all minions except for the imp; create healthstones, soulstones, firestones and spellstones; cast many high level spells and enslave demons Abilities Find detailed information about the warlock's various abilities on the Warlock Spells page. Minions Warlocks can summon a variety of minions, each exhibiting different skill sets which are useful in different situations. *Imp (Level Obtained: Varies, obtainable as early as 1, usually 4 though, Gnome, Undead, Human, Orc, Blood Elf) : The Imp's main role is a support minion, designed to do additional damage alongside the caster via its Firebolt attack. The Imp is very fragile and will die very quickly if attacked, but it requires no Soul Shard to summon, and is often used to farm new Soul Shards when you run out and cannot summon a different minion. Other Imp abilities include Phase Shift (allowing the Imp to shift out of phase and cannot be attacked by enemies), Blood Pact, a powerful stamina buff for everyone in your party, and Fire Shield, a Thorns-like damage shield (with FR at higher levels) which he will cast on you and your teammates that enter combat. With the Improved Imp and Improved Firebolt talents, the Imp is a damaging minion in the warlock's arsenal; at least until he runs out of Mana. The Imp is also useful as a mana battery for affliction warlocks using Dark Pact due to his ability to stay out of harms way and his fast mana regeneration. *Voidwalker (Level Obtained: 10, Undead, Orc, Blood Elf, Gnome, Human) : This demon deals little damage, but has very good armor and good hit points. He is excellent while soloing, because he is an excellent tank, is able to keep aggro and has high armor and health. He is also excellent for farming Soul Shards (provided you have one to summon him with). The Voidwalker's main ability, Torment, is a taunt that causes enemies to lose interest in the warlock and instead attack the Voidwalker. There is also a PBAOE version of Torment called Suffering. At higher levels, however, it is unable to hold a mob's attention for very long. Additional Voidwalker spells include Sacrifice, which kills your Voidwalker but creates a 30-second damage absorption shield for the warlock, and Consume Shadows which is an out of combat self-heal for the Voidwalker. *Succubus (Level Obtained: 20, Undead, Orc, Alliance) : The Succubus is replete with spells that deal damage and mesmerize the enemy in different ways. Her first ability, Lash of Pain, is a direct-damage, low-mana cast that deals shadow damage to her target. Other spells include Soothing Kiss, which will reduce threat (the reverse of the Voidwalker's Torment ability) and Seduction, which mesmerizes a target for 15 seconds (or until attacked). The Succubus also has a self-only Lesser Invisibility spell. Succubus deals the most damage of all the basic minions, without talent upgrades. *Felhunter (Level Obtained: 30, Horde, Alliance) : The Felhunter is your anti-caster minion. Where the Succubus deals lots of melee damage, the Voidwalker is a great tank and the Imp deals lots of ranged damage, the Felhunter has high magic resist and has abilities to Counterspell (Spell Lock), remove buffs from enemies and remove debuffs from friendlies (Devour Magic). The Warlock employing a meleeing Felhunter can also use Tainted Blood to reduce the Attack power of enemies when they land hits on the minion. One could also use Paranoia to greatly increase the stealth detection of all party member close to the demon. There are no talents that specifically improve the Felhunter. *Infernal (Level Obtained: 50, from Grimoire of Inferno or Kroshius' Infernal Core) : While it deals better melee damage than the Succubus, has higher HP, fire immunity, and more AC than a Voidwalker; it needs to be enslaved (with the Enslave Demon spell) after the first five minutes. This demon can break loose unexpectedly, causing it to turn on its former master. It can be enslaved again (at the cost of one Soul Shard per attempt), but Enslave is subject to diminishing returns -- the duration decreases with each successive casting on the same demon. The Infernal deals strictly in melee damage, combined with an immolation effect that hurts all enemies nearby. It also requires an Infernal Stone to summon. *Doomguard (Level Obtained: 60, from Curse of Doom or Ritual of Doom) : The Doomguard is the most powerful Warlock minion. It has the highest HP and AC, as well as having Rain of Fire, Dispel, Cripple and Warstomp. A properly used Doomguard can take out entire camps of enemies at a time before perishing. However, like the Infernal, it requires Enslave Demon to be cast on it to stay within the Warlock's control, but unlike the Infernal, it MUST be enslaved right away, or it will start attacking you or your party/raid. It can be re-enslaved after but the Enslave's duration diminishes after each casting. Curse of Doom has about a 10% chance of summoning a Doomguard if it deals the killing damage. Ritual of Doom will summon a Doomguard 100% of the time, but requires the assistance of your party, and will kill one member of your group. That one party member could be you, thus unleashing an angry Doomguard on your group mates with no one to enslave it unless another Warlock is in your group. Ritual of Doom requires a Demonic Figurine reagent (costs or with Honored status 10% discount). * Felguard was added in the 2.0.1 patch (Obtained: from 41 point tier of the new demonology talent tree) : The Felguard is the most powerful non-enslaved Warlock minion. Overall effectiveness compared to other warlock minions is in a rapid state of flux. As of patch 2.0.3, it has similar DPS to the succubus, while tanking almost as well as the Voidwalker (having slightly less armor but much better single target aggro generation (this appears to be changing however, with armor increasing). This demon has abilities that help a lot in PvP as well as when soloing. It uses the standard single soul shard to summon. Pet scaling * 1 stam gives 0.3 to your pet. * 1 resistance gives 0.4 to your pet. * 1 armor gives 0.35 armor to the pet. * 1 spell damage gives 0.15 spell damage, and 0.57 attack power to your pet. * 1 int gives your pet 0.3 int. Mounts *Felsteed (Level Obtained: 40, from trainers) : The Felsteed is the 'free mount' that Warlocks receive at level 40. Other than Paladins, all other classes must pay for a mount and for training to ride it (these prices can be lowered by being Honored with the mount's city (and pre 2.0 by obtaining the Sergeant rank)). This is a great help since Warlocks must purchase spells for their summoned minions as well. You also gain riding skill 75. *Dreadsteed (Level Obtained: 60, from Mor'zul Bloodbringer in Burning Steppes near the Altar of Storms) : The Dreadsteed is the Warlock Epic level 60 mount. This minion is obtained though a long quest line. It is not free, but it is still available to Warlocks at a significant discount compared to other classes (roughly , compared to ~ for everyone else). This cost can be further reduced by another if you have another warlock who already has the materials. This cost however does not take into account the three materials collection quests you are tasked with which can be very costly, particularly if your Warlock does not possess any of the trade skills required to do them. By completing the quest line you also gain riding skill 150. Damage over Time Spells A Warlock's DoTs are the bread and butter of their arsenal, regardless of talent specialization. * Corruption - Shadow damage. * Immolate - Fire damage which also includes direct damage. * Unstable Affliction - Affliction Talent which deals shadow damage, and if the spell is dispelled by someone, that someone takes shadow-based direct damage and becomes silenced. * Curse of Agony - Shadow damage. * Siphon Life - Affliction Talent which heals the warlock for an amount equal to the damage dealt to the target. Direct Damage Spells The Warlock's direct damage spells are either Shadow or Fire based. While a Warlock's direct damage alone does not compare to the Mage, when coupled with their DoTs and a minion they can achieve strong, steady DPS to rival other classes'. *Shadow Bolt - Shadow damage. *Immolate - Deals an initial amount of fire-based direct damage, and also has damage over time. *Searing Pain - Fire spell producing a higher amount of threat. *Shadowburn - Instant cast, Shadow damage, Destruction talent that costs a Soul Shard, but may return it, and has a cooldown. *Soul Fire - 6 second(long) cast Fire spell requiring a Soul Shard, and has a cooldown. *Death Coil - Shadow spell that also heals the warlock equal to the amount of damage dealt, and causes the target to flee in horror for 3 seconds. *Conflagrate - Instant cast, Fire damage, Destruction talent usable only if the target is debuffed with Immolate. *Incinerate - Fire spell with damage that increases if the target is debuffed with Immolate. *Shadowfury - Shadow damage, ground targeted area of effect, Destruction talent which stuns for two seconds. Channeled Some of a Warlock's most important spells are channeled, and they can be protected from interruption by damage, using the Fel Concentration and Intensity talents. * Rain of Fire - Ground targeted area of effect fire damage * Hellfire - Point blank area of effect fire damage that also harms the caster. * Drain Life - Drains the target's health, healing the warlock for an equal amount. * Drain Mana - Drain's the target's mana, returning it to the warlock. * Drain Soul - The primary Soul Shard producing spell. Also deals a small amount of damage, and can return a percentage of mana & a permanent decrease in affliction-based threat with the Improved Drain Soul talent. Curses The Warlock has available variety of curses, but only one can be cast upon an enemy at a given time. This creates the need for determining an appropriate Curse in a given situation. *Curse of Agony - Deals increasing damage over time to the target. *Curse of Weakness - Reduces the target's attack power. *Curse of Recklessness - Decreases the target's armor value, increases its attack power and, prevents it from running away at low health, but makes the target immune to fear. *Curse of Tongues - Increases the target's casting time by a percentage. *Curse of Exhaustion - An affliction talent that decreases the target's movement speed by a percentage. *Curse of the Elements - Reduces the target's fire and frost resistances and increases the fire and frost damage taken by a percentage. *Curse of Shadow - Reduces the target's arcane and shadow resistances and increases the arcane and shadow damage taken by a percentage. *Curse of Doom - Deals damage after a delay of one minute and has a chance to summon a Doomguard. This spell cannot be cast on players, and its damage can be increased using the affliction talent Amplify Curse. Conjured Items Another powerful ability of the Warlock is to create beneficial items from Soul Shards. Some of these stones are used from the wand slot and others are used from the inventory. All conjured items disappear 15 minutes after logging off. *Create Healthstone - Creates a consumable stone that will heal its owner. It can be given to other players and used like a health potion, but is on a separate timer. *Create Soulstone - Creates a consumable stone used by the warlock to cast a spell that allows the grouped player to self resurrect if they die while the soulstone is active. *Create Firestone - Creates a stone that cannot be given to other players, which adds Fire damage to your wielded weapon and increases Fire spell damage. *Create Spellstone - Creates a stone that cannot be given to other players, which when equipped increases the warlock's critical strike chance, and when used, will remove all negative magic effects. It also has a three minute cooldown. Healing While a Warlock is by no means a healer, they do have some limited ability to heal themselves, their minions and others while in combat, and even resurrect. To heal themselves there are Drain Life, Siphon Life (Affliction talent) and Death Coil which, conveniently, also damage the target. Demonic Sacrifice (Demonology talent) also restores 2% of total Health every 4 sec, at the cost of a summoned Voidwalker. The Demon Armor spell also provides a small health regeneration effect, including during combat. The newer Fel Armor spell, included in the 2.0.1 patch, increases healing done to the Warlock by 20%, from any source (even bandages and potions), but does not stack with Demon Armor. Warlocks can also regain health equal to 20% of damage caused by Shadowbolt, Shadowburn, Soul Fire, Incinerate, Searing Pain, and Conflagrate though the talent Soul Leech (Destruction talent). To heal others (or himself), a Warlock can create a Healthstone and hand it to another member of their party. These can be improved through talents. Burning Crusades introduced the Ritual of Souls which creates a Soul Well from which 10 Master Healthstones can be extracted by any person in the raid or party. To heal their minion they have Health Funnel. This can be improved through talents. To resurrect a target a Warlock may use a Soulstone on the target before it dies (30 minutes Buff duration and Cooldown), allowing it to resurrect on death. Miscellany The Warlock has other valuable spells at their disposal *Fear - sends an enemy fleeing for a period of time,and is key to prevent the warlock from receiving damage. Unlike Mage’s Polymorph ability, the Warlock’s key Crowd control ability does not increase health generation of the target, so they are able to Fear a target while still doing damage, though all damage has a chance to break Fear. *Howl of Terror - sends 5 enemies around you fleeing in terror for a period of time. A two point talent on the eighth tier of the Affliction tree can make this spell instant. *Banish - freezes a demon or elemental - preventing them from attacking, though they are also immune to all damage while banished. Can also be used in PvP against enemy demons and Treeform Druids or Treants summoned by Druids. *Ritual of Summoning - a ritual requiring 2 other party members which allows you to summon another party member to your location. This spell cannot be used on targets that outside an instance that you are in, or in an instance you are outside of. *Eye of Kilrogg - a fragile but speedy eye that allows you to scout out dangerous areas from a safe distance. The eye has a slow fall ability. It is possible to aggro some bosses with an Eye. *Unending Breath - allows a target to breathe underwater for 10 minutes.. *Detect Invisibility - allows a target to see invisible units for 10 minutes. To alleviate a common misunderstanding, it should be emphasized that stealth and invisibility are entirely different mechanics. This ability affects only invisible units, not units who are in stealth. *Sense Demons - shows demons on the minimap. Melee Although the warlock is a ranged class, it does have some provisions for fighting at melee range. Warlocks can equip swords, as well as Firestones to bolster their melee attack power. Defensively, a warlock can share his damage with his pet via Soul Link, and counter melee attacks with Fire Shield. With crowd control abilities such as Fear, Death Coil, and Howl of Terror, the warlock can help deter melee engagements. Talents *Affliction - Affliction talents are largely based on increasing the effectiveness of DoTs, Drains, and Curses. Affliction's strengths are its ability to remain mobile in PvP, allow the Warlock to heal himself, and is very mana efficient, great for farming. Key talents include Shadow Mastery, Siphon Life, Fel Concentration, Improved Corruption, Dark Pact and Unstable Affliction. *Demonology - Demonology talents are largely based on improving the effectiveness of your minions, conjure spells, and bestowing other passive bonuses. Demonology's strengths are its versatility and survivability. Key talents include Soul Link, Master Demonologist, Demonic Sacrifice, Demonic Embrace, Demonic Knowledge and Summon Felguard. Many use the Demonology tree to overcome the scarcity of spell damage gear at early levels. *Destruction - Destruction talents are largely based on increasing the effect of a warlock's Direct Damage spells, making them (and their dps pets) cast faster, crit more often, and ultimately deal more Burst Damage. Destruction's strength is its ability to quickly kill a single foe. Key talents include Conflagrate, Ruin, Shadowburn, Bane, Shadow and Flame and Shadowfury. Destruction is the only spec with high damage instant cast spells to quickly finish a fight, and the least mana efficient as well. Talent builders can be found at Official Blizzard site, WoW Den's Talent Calculator, WorldofWar.se, WoW Vault, Thottbot, Merciless Talent Calculator. See the Warlock talents page for detailed information and talent trees. Suggested Professions One suggested pair of professions, that go along with the warlock class, is Herbalism and Alchemy. You can use potions for buffs and sell the remaining herbs at the Auction House, most of which sell for more than they do at the vendor. Secondly, Enchanting works equally well and since no gathering profession is needed, it leaves you open to choose any other profession. Tailoring is also a wonderful profession for Warlocks, allowing them to make better gear than that found in some instances. As of The Burning Crusade expansion, the specialty tailoring recipes (Shadowcloth, Spellcloth, and Primal Mooncloth) have many pieces of gear for Warlocks, such as the Shadow's Embrace and Wrath of Spellfire sets. End-Game Expectations DPS, Soulstones, and Minion Tanking. A Warlock's abilities can bring a lot of support to parties, and they are an excellent source of DPS. Soul Shards should be put to good use in order to Summon late comers and give out Healthstones. They should be prepared to banish a lot of elementals, since they're the only form of Crowd Control in Molten Core except on Majordomo Executus. Also, a Soulstone should be used on the healers, as it may make the difference in whether the party lives or wipes, or whether everyone runs back to the instance or gets resurrected. When doing 40-man high level instances, the Warlocks normally assign the responsibility of curses among each other. Effective use of applying those curses are usually expected. It's a Warlock's responsibility to know what curse to use unless the raid leader requests otherwise. Due to a demonology Warlock's high magic resistance, they are used temporarily in tanking Vek'lor in Temple of Ahn'Qiraj who is immune to physical damage and does mostly magical damage. Macros Addons Many warlock addons used to revolve around sorting shards. However, as of patch 1.9 this functionality was integrated into soul shard bags. * RaidSummon will queue group/raidmembers that request to be summoned (by whispering you a specific keyword) and notify the warlock with an audio signal and a text message. Casting "Ritual of Summoning" will then summon the first player in the queue and - if the ritual succeeded (RaidSummon detects failures) - remove him from the list. Casting again will summon the next player and so on. Additionally, using the "Ritual of Summoning" action while targeting a raid/group-member will perform a normal ritual of summoning on him - preferring the target over already queued raid/group-members. This mod has not been updated for * Necrosis LdC is based on Necrosis 1 by infernal. It is described by its author as "a mod to help Warlocks managing their stones, shards and demon summoning. No more, but no less..." It is a very useful addon and perhaps the most widely used of the Warlock specific addons. It's unclear if Necrosis LdC is still being developed, but it has been continued as Necrosis 2 * DoTimer is an addon that times DoTs that you cast on other people. It supports all classes, and it is written by Asheyla, 70 Undead Warlock, , Shattered Hand (Horde). There are four functions performed by DoTimer: the base DoT timer, a cooldown timer, a communications addon that lets you communicate your timers to others in your party, and a customizable notifications addon that can be set to notify you or others of specific events. This addon works with * LyLock provides enhanced actions for summons, soulstone, and healthstone, and soulstone cooldown and banish countdown timers. Notifications for events can be customized so individual editable messages are sent to other players by party, raid, or whisper. The soulstone notification can be sent to other warlocks in your group by whisper. Also tracks total Soul Shard count and provides buttons for Fel/Demon Armor and other spells. LyLock 2.1.0 is a 2.1.0 WoW version of Lylock by another developer that builds on the original. This addon works with See Also * Warlock races * Instance Grouping Guide Warlock -- Advice for instances * Starting a Warlock -- Some advice when starting out. * Category:Warlock Abilities -- Spells available to the Warlock. * Warlock Category -- Further information on the Warlock class, including spells. * Warlock: Working with Other Classes * Warlock: How to Kill A... * Warlock: How to Help A... * Warlock quests * Warlock tactics * Warlock talents * Warlock patch history -- Changes to the Warlock class *Spell Damage Coefficients External links * EU WoW forums * US WoW forums * Warlock @ Wikispaces - A warlock-specific wiki * Warlock Talent Guide (Levels 1-30, all specs) * The Warlocks Den * Blood Pact - weekly warlock feature at WoW Insider Category:Classes Category:WoW Classes Category:RTS Classes Category:RPG Classes Category:Warlocks